By Tony Hicks
Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am in Uncategorized.

Just got back from a couple days at Santa Cruz with the kiddies. Usually with family trips, I’m a bit Clark Griswold in terms of preparation. My wife loves lists and is easier the more adult of the two of us. But for some reason, we were completely unprepared this go-round.

First HUGE mistake was not bringing a bippy for the 1-year-old. We realized this only a few miles out and could’ve turned around, but were like “What the hell, we’ll find her something to chew on.” So, of course there were at least 30 times the ensuing two days that her screaming would’ve been solved with a bippy. And they must not sell them in Santa Cruz (damned hippies) or else you’d think good parents would’ve gone and bought one.

We suck.

We also just – for some reason – didn’t bring snacks and drinks and ended up spending $3,256 on food and drinks we could’ve just brought from home. For some reason (you get the idea “for some reason” was the theme for this trip?), we didn’t use enough sun screen and all ended up getting sunburned one way or another. We didn’t bring a beach blanket and forgot to take baby wipes to the beach, which was awesome when the baby’s diaper blew up and I had to rinse her off with a $3.75 bottle of Aquafina.

But at least the kids didn’t complain once about the hurricane force winds that kept blowing our umbrella halfway to Hawaii. Oh, that’s right, they did complain … the entire day. Nothing like spending hundreds of dollars taking your kids somewhere and having them whine that they’d rather be home.

We almost always leave early for trips, but didn’t get on the road until 10 a.m. Which meant that, with rest and dinner (at the wrong most expensive restaurant we could find, for some strange reason) we couldn’t ride all the rides we wanted to. Oh, and we forgot to arrange for someone to feed our animals, which left us scrambling to find a relative by phone the morning of Day Two.

We suck. But, on the bright side, I’m starting planning the next Disneyland trip right now.